Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth

She uttered the same wild cry with which she had fled into the forest.

“I will die, then!” and she threw up her arms. Another moment, and she had sunk.

To see her perish before his eyes! who could bear that? Her hands alone were above the surface. Amyas caught convulsively at her in the darkness, and seized her wrist.

A yell rose from the negroes: a roar from the crew as from a cage of lions. There was a rush and a swirl along the surface of the stream; and “Caiman! caiman!” shouted twenty voices.

Now, or never, for the strong arm! “To larboard, men, or over we go!” cried Amyas, and with one huge heave he lifted the slender body upon the gunwale. Her lower limbs were still in the water, when, within arm’s length, rose above the stream a huge muzzle. The lower jaw lay flat, the upper reached as high as Amyas’s head. He could see the long fangs gleam white in the moonshine; he could see for one moment full down the monstrous depths of that great gape, which would have crushed a buffalo. Three inches, and no more, from that soft side, the snout surged up—

There was the gleam of an axe from above, a sharp ringing blow, and the jaws came together with a clash which rang from bank to bank. He had missed her! Swerving beneath the blow, his snout had passed beneath her body, and smashed up against the side of the canoe, as the striker, overbalanced, fell headlong overboard upon the monster’s back.

“Who is it?”

“Yeo!” shouted a dozen.

Man and beast went down together, and where they sank, the moonlight shone on a great swirling eddy, while all held their breaths, and Ayacanora cowered down into the bottom of the canoe, her proud spirit utterly broken, for the first time, by the terror of that great need, and by a bitter loss. For in the struggle, the holy trumpet, companion of all her wanderings, had fallen from her bosom; and her fond hope of bringing magic prosperity to her English friends had sunk with it to the bottom of the stream.

None heeded her; not even Amyas, round whose knees she clung, fawning like a spaniel dog: for where was Yeo?

Another swirl; a shout from the canoe abreast of them, and Yeo rose, having dived clean under his own boat, and risen between the two.

“Safe as yet, lads! Heave me a line, or he’ll have me after all.”

But ere the brute reappeared, the old man was safe on board.

“The Lord has stood by me,” panted he, as he shot the water from his ears. “We went down together: I knew the Indian trick, and being uppermost, had my thumbs in his eyes before he could turn: but he carried me down to the very mud. My breath was nigh gone, so I left go, and struck up: but my toes tingled as I rose again, I’ll warrant. There the beggar is, looking for me, I declare!”

And, true enough, there was the huge brute swimming slowly round and round, in search of his lost victim. It was too dark to put an arrow into his eye; so they paddled on, while Ayacanora crouched silently at Amyas’s feet.

“Yeo!” asked he, in a low voice, “what shall we do with her?”

“Why ask me, sir?” said the old man, as he had a very good right to ask.

“Because, when one don’t know oneself, one had best inquire of one’s elders. Besides, you saved her life at the risk of your own, and have a right to a voice in the matter, if any one has, old friend.”

“Then, my dear young captain, if the Lord puts a precious soul under your care, don’t you refuse to bear the burden He lays on you.”

Amyas was silent awhile; while Ayacanora, who was evidently utterly exhausted by the night’s adventure, and probably by long wanderings, watchings, and weepings which had gone before it, sank with her head against his knee, fell fast asleep, and breathed as gently as a child.

At last he rose in the canoe, and called Cary alongside.

“Listen to me, gentlemen, and sailors all. You know that we have a maiden on board here, by no choice of our own. Whether she will be a blessing to us, God alone can tell: but she may turn to the greatest curse which has befallen us ever since we came out over Bar three years ago. Promise me one thing, or I put her ashore the next beach, and that is, that you will treat her as if she were your own sister; and make an agreement here and now, that if the maid comes to harm among us, the man that is guilty shall hang for it by the neck till he’s dead, even though he be I, Captain Leigh, who speak to you. I’ll hang you, as I am a Christian; and I give you free leave to hang me.”

“A very fair bargain,” quoth Cary, “and I for one will see it kept to. Lads, we’ll twine a double strong halter for the captain as we go down along.”

“I am not jesting, Will.”

“I know it, good old lad,” said Cary, stretching out his own hand to him across the water through the darkness, and giving him a hearty shake. “I know it; and listen, men! So help me God! but I’ll be the first to back the Captain in being as good as his word, as I trust he never will need to be.”

“Amen!” said Brimblecombe. “Amen!” said Yeo; and many an honest voice joined in that honest compact, and kept it too, like men.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW THEY TOOK THE GREAT GALLEON

“When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt,
Did march to the siege of the city of Gaunt,
They muster’d their soldiers by two and by three,
But the foremost in battle was Mary Ambree.
When brave Sir John Major was slain in her sight,
Who was her true lover, her joy and delight,
Because he was murther’d most treacherouslie,
Then vow’d to avenge him fair Mary Ambree.”

                                     Old Ballad, A. D. 1584.
One more glance at the golden tropic sea, and the golden tropic evenings, by the shore of New Granada, in the golden Spanish Main.

The bay of Santa Marta is rippling before the land-breeze one sheet of living flame. The mighty forests are sparkling with myriad fireflies. The lazy mist which lounges round the inner hills shines golden in the sunset rays; and, nineteen thousand feet aloft, the mighty peak of Horqueta cleaves the abyss of air, rose-red against the dark-blue vault of heaven. The rosy cone fades to a dull leaden hue; but only for awhile. The stars flash out one by one, and Venus, like another moon, tinges the eastern snows with gold, and sheds across the bay a long yellow line of rippling light. Everywhere is glory and richness. What wonder if the earth in that enchanted land be as rich to her inmost depths as she is upon the surface? The heaven, the hills, the sea, are one sparkling garland of jewels—what wonder if the soil be jewelled also? if every watercourse and bank of earth be spangled with emeralds and rubies, with grains of gold and feathered wreaths of native silver?

So thought, in a poetic mood, the Bishop of Cartagena, as he sat in the state cabin of that great galleon, The City of the True Cross, and looked pensively out of the window towards the shore. The good man was in a state of holy calm. His stout figure rested on one easy-chair, his stout ankles on another, beside a table spread with oranges and limes, guavas and pine-apples, and all the fruits of Ind.

An Indian girl, bedizened with scarfs and gold chains, kept off the flies with a fan of feathers; and by him, in a pail of ice from the Horqueta (the gift of some pious Spanish lady, who had “spent” an Indian or two in bringing down the precious offering), stood more than one flask of virtuous wine of Alicant. But he was not so selfish, good man, as to enjoy either ice or wine alone; Don Pedro, colonel of the soldiers on board, Don Alverez, intendant of his Catholic majesty’s customs at Santa Marta, and Don Paul, captain of mariners in The City of the True Cross, had, by his especial request, come to his assistance that evening, and with two friars, who sat at the lower end of the table, were doing their best to prevent the good man from taking too bitterly to heart the present unsatisfactory state of his cathedral town, which had just been sacked and burnt by an old friend of ours, Sir Francis Drake.

“We have been great sufferers, senors,—ah, great sufferers,” snuffled the bishop, quoting Scripture, after the fashion of the day, glibly enough, but often much too irreverently for me to repeat, so boldly were his texts travestied, and so freely interlarded by grumblings at Tita and the mosquitoes. “Great sufferers, truly; but there shall be a remnant,—ah, a remnant like the shaking of the olive tree and the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done.—Ah! Gold? Yes, I trust Our Lady’s mercies are not shut up, nor her arms shortened.—Look, senors!”—and he pointed majestically out of the window. “It looks gold! it smells of gold, as I may say, by a poetical license. Yea, the very waves, as they ripple past us, sing of gold, gold, gold!”

“It is a great privilege,” said the intendant, “to have comfort so gracefully administered at once by a churchman and a scholar.”

“A poet, too,” said Don Pedro. “You have no notion what sweet sonnets—”

“Hush, Don Pedro—hush! If I, a mateless bird, have spent an idle hour in teaching lovers how to sing, why, what of that? I am a churchman, senors; but I am a man and I can feel, senors; I can sympathize; I can palliate; I can excuse. Who knows better than I how much human nature lurks in us fallen sons of Adam? Tita!”

“Um?” said the trembling girl, with a true Indian grunt.

“Fill his excellency the intendant’s glass. Does much more treasure come down, illustrious senor? May the poor of Mary hope for a few more crumbs from their Mistress’s table?”

“Not a pezo, I fear. The big white cow up there”—and he pointed to the Horqueta—“has been milked dry for this year.”

“Ah!” And he looked up at the magnificent snow peak. “Only good to cool wine with, eh? and as safe for the time being as Solomon’s birds.”

“Solomon’s birds? Explain your recondite allusion, my lord.”

“Enlighten us, your excellency, enlighten us.”

“Ah! thereby hangs a tale. You know the holy birds who run up and down on the Prado at Seville among the ladies’ pretty feet,—eh? with hooked noses and cinnamon crests? Of course. Hoopoes—Upupa, as the classics have it. Well, senors, once on a time, the story goes, these hoopoes all had golden crowns on their heads; and, senors, they took the consequences—eh? But it befell on a day that all the birds and beasts came to do homage at the court of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon, and among them came these same hoopoes; and they had a little request to make, the poor rogues. And what do you think it was? Why, that King Solomon would pray for them that they might wear any sort of crowns but these same golden ones; for—listen, Tita, and see the snare of riches—mankind so hunted, and shot, and trapped, and snared them, for the sake of these same golden crowns, that life was a burden to bear. So Solomon prayed, and instead of golden crowns, they all received crowns of feathers; and ever since, senors, they live as merrily as crickets in an oven, and also have the honor of bearing the name of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon. Tita! fill the senor commandant’s glass. Fray Gerundio, what are you whispering about down there, sir?”

Fray Gerundio had merely commented to his brother on the bishop’s story of Solomon’s birds with an—

“O si sic omnia!—would that all gold would turn to feathers in like wise!”